Gulf Diplomatic Spat – What Is The Larger Economic Impact On Qatar & The UAE?

Business Reporter Shoshana knows her way around Europe and the Middle East with a notebook and video camera. She has worked as a multi-media journalist for Channel NewsAsia, Ruptly video news agency, the UN, and most recently, with 7Days in Dubai. She speaks Arabic and English and has degrees in Middle East History and Political Science.

“It won’t have a huge impact on trade as Qatar’s main trading partners are European countries,” he opined. “Qatar is wealthy enough to almost excommunicate itself from large parts of the region.”

He said that Qatar’s main export, liquefied natural gas (LNG) to European trading partners, would remain untouched. “If we look at its gas as an example, it exports a lot of its gas to Europe and the rest of the world.”

He further added that the only way Qatar could get impacted was if the United Nations (UN) passed economic sanctions on it. But “Unless there is hard evidence that they are supporting terrorism, I don’t see the UN backing a resolution for worldwide sanctions, specifically on oil.”

He said that the abrupt slump in Qatari stocks from a negative 7% on Monday could swing in the opposite direction just as quickly.

“Any sort of blips in markets tends to be just that. It potentially could be over in 48-72 hours.”

The diplomatic rift was sparked when State-run Qatar News Agency published fake statements attributed to the country’s leader, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on May 25, saying Qatar had “tensions” with the Trump administration and Iran is a “big power in the stabilization of the region.”

Even as Qatar claimed that the Qatari news agency was hacked, media outlets in the region, especially in Saudi Arabia and UAE carried the statements, sparking a rift that resulted in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and Egypt ceasing diplomatic relations, cancelling flight connections, and ordering Qatari citizens out of their territories.

What about the UAE?

Mishal Al Gergawi, managing director of the UAE-based think-tank, the Delma Institute, said that he did not think the crisis would be resolved anytime soon.

“In 2013, there was a similar action, but it was not nearly as severe as this one.”

According to him, the fallout on GCC economies would be negligible, as they are not major trading partners with Qatar.

“I don’t think Qatar is a very large trade partner with any of these countries. It doesn’t export anything beyond oil and gas, or re-export for that matter.”

He said the UAE could suffer marginal tourism and real-estate losses from the fallout.“It doesn’t have a large population, so Qatari tourism which is going to indefinitely decrease isn’t that large.

“Qatar doesn’t have a large population, and so Qatari tourism which is going to indefinitely decrease isn’t that large. Maybe there is something on the real estate market but again, how big is the Qatari industrial market going to go?”

“So I don’t see how it’s going to have a huge economic impact or even a significant impact on the UAE economy,” he said.

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